It’s the 11th hour and I am in the kitchen again! I have been invited to fill one of three empty spaces on the last Tres Dias Weekend of the year for our area and am just in time for the last team meeting. Â
The kitchen is a great place to serve for many reasons. You never know who your going meet and work alongside. New and maybe even lasting friendships can develop. In fact, my invitation to be on this team came from one of the ladies I’d met over 3 years ago during another weekend where I worked in the kitchen. She and I had gotten to know each other when we served on a team when starting a new Community in Ecuador. We had not been in touch for years because we lived in different states. Good old Facebook opened the door for me to be a part of this new team in the 11th hour.
As we prepare the meals and snacks over the next 3 days for more than 100 people, God will do amazing things as we share our hearts with another. We will find we have things in common and share in the same struggles.   There are those who have planned the menu and have shopped till they’re ready to drop. There are those who will cook, clean and serve. Still there will be others who will be creative in decorating the dining room to be a place of beauty. When the Weekend does finally arrive, there will be others who are not ‘officially’ on the team who come from all over to give of their time and energy in helping to prepare meals and snacks from early, early in the morning to late in the evening for all three days.
These folks, who are mostly ladies, because this is a ladies’ weekend will be in the kitchen serving some deliciously prepared meals to express the love of God in special unique ways. This is just one of the many aspects of what goes on in preparation of a Tres Dias Weekend.
The kitchen team is one of many parts of a much larger team. The entire group has been in preparation for the last few months purposefully training and building unity to share the love of Christ in special ways that He has prepared for those He has chosen.
The ladies on the inside team, will have more direct interaction with the attendees during the weekend. They will all be together in the rollo room during the day listening to teachings wrapped in personal testimonies. These talks or ‘rollos’ will touch the hearts and lives of everyone in the room. Each person will be touched by the love of God at some point or another during the three days ahead. There will be such an outpouring of God’s love that hearts will be healed, new freedoms found, relationships healed and new ones made. Those who have been preparing to serve will experience as much of God’s love as those who the weekend has been planned for. The months of preparation, prayer and sacrifice are all about the ‘candidates’ as they are the primary focus of the weekend. Its all about the candidates knowing the Love of God like they have never known it before.
Now, no one remains unchanged after one of these weekends, no matter how many you have done.  Over the three days it doesn’t matter where you serve – God manages to touch every single heart in intimate ways reminding us of His love.
Not only am I looking forward to being changed by the energy, excitement and faith of those who have been working and planning for the last couple of months as I attend the last team meeting, but I am looking forward to seeing how God touches the lives of those I will meet on the Weekend. I am really excited to experience my own touch from the Lord and being refreshed in His presence.
I will share the experience of my weekend from this point forward through the view of being in the kitchen. There will no doubt be the Fruit of the Spirit served and required of those serving before the weekend is over. I will be writing from the view as one coming in at the very end of team formation and share with you my perspective of becoming part of the kitchen team……….again! Looking forward to what God does in reminding me of the awesomeness of His love.